World's Longest Bridge

On July 1, 2011 Qingdao, China opened The Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, the world's longest cross-sea bridge stretching at staggering length of 26.4 miles long. The bridge spans from Qingdao to the offshore island of Huangdao, and cost approximately £960 million to build (approximately $1,534,746,000). It took four years to build the bridge, and it is almost three miles longer than the previous record-holder, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana which was 23.87 miles long.

450,000 tons of steel and 2.3 million meters of concrete were used in the construction of the bridge, which was designed by the Shandong Gaosu Group. It was created to be able to withstand severe earthquakes, typhoons, and collisions with ships. The bridge is supported by more than 5,000 pillars, and is 35 meters wide (115 feet), carrying six lanes and two shoulders.

I found out about this bridge when I read the Google Earth Blog at http://www.gearthblog.com/. I actually use RSS to get Google Earth Blog feeds sent to my iGoogle page each time the blog is updated. This type of information gathering I call "training the information to come to you," because all I have to do is access one page to get the most updated information about information I am interested in. Thousands of blogs, wikis, and other informational sites have an RSS icon on them so you can also "train the information to come to you."

More information about the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge can be found at http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/.